Kobe Bryant’s rocky relationship with the City of Brotherly Love took another interesting turn last night. In front of a packed Wells Fargo Center, the Laker brought his career scoring total to 28,601 points, moving him past former teammate Shaquille O’Neal for fifth all-time on the NBA’s scoring list. The Sixers would go on to win in front of their home crowd, thanks in large part to Lou Williams, who finished with 24 points.

Kobe’s play has been a revelation all season. I’ll be the first to admit it: I expected his play to slow down a bit in his sixteenth season. A fair assumption, given the amount of playing time the 33-year-old has clocked since he first donned number eight. Still, he continues to prove skeptics wrong, putting up points in bunches like it’s 2005. Every milestone he passes shortens the gap between him and Michael Jordan. We could have that discussion right now, but if he ever gets around to winning that sixth ring? That’s when things start to get interesting. Whatever happens, Kobe’s status as a top-five player all-time seems secure.

The thing that bothers le with KB MJ comparisons is that for the first 3 rings, Shaq was the clear alpha dog of the lakers, so how is Kobe going to be on par with MJ just by looking at the number of rings?
Kobe helped Shaq winning these 3 first rings, not the other way around.
And I’m not even a MJ fan like that.

Jordan couldnt win without Pippen. And while it was clear Jordan was the dominant one, he couldnt win without him. If we arent gonna punish Jordan for needing help why would we punish others? Im not taking a stance on one being better than the other because right now Kobe is acting like he’s 28 on the court and who knows how long he can maintain, im just playing devils advocate.

Still, it’s not Kobe’s fault he was born when he was. Shaq was older and in his prime when he landed in LA; Kobe was just a rookie, and an 18-year-old at that. He wasn’t about to leapfrog Shaq like that. And I think he’s proved since then that he is just as capable as winning as a number one option than as a number two.

And, for the record, I’m not saying Kobe>MJ, because that’s not the case right now. But I think Kobe pretty much killed the Shaq argument.

@Hip-O-Critic: Because he was past his peak. Shaq with wade was the supporting star, that was not the case for the Lakers rings, imo. Shaq won those finals MVP, didn’t he?
I’m not downgrading Kobe’s performance but you have to admit that Shaq used to be the head honcho of those Lakers. Besides that Gasol-for-Kwame trade was downright illegal, lol

Damn, the Kobe street team is on the warpath!!!
Again, I am not trying to downgrade anything Kobe has done, all I’m saying is that Shaq should get alpha dog credit for let’s say 2 of the Lakers rings. Kobe gets the rest. The argument about MJ not winning without Pippen is valid, but no one is ever gonna argue that MJ was not the boss of its 6 winning teams. We could not say that for Kobe.
We cool?

From what I can gather he had platelets injected into the bad parts of the knee. They are more concentrated (?) than normal platelets and thus heal the body better. Its probably the wisest thing you can do (from what I can tell), let the body heal itself.

The point for me was that when Kobe won those rings he was still younger than when Jordan reached his first final in both age and years in the league. At the end of the Lakers three peat Kobe was still like 23 where as Jordan at his first was 27. (Again I feel the need to stress devils advocate role) Its a lot less likely for a 23 year old to look Shaq in the face and say this is my team. But Kobe was good enough that the Lakers eventually gave Kobe the team and the Lakers benefited from it.

PRP or Platelet Rich Plasma therapy is actually 100% legal and an up-and-coming treatment around the world… It involves filtering the patients’ own blood and separating the platelets out. They’re then re-injected in a concentration that’s around 10x more than what’s typically in blood before the filtering. With the injecting, it helps stimulate the growth of new, healthy tissue much quicker and more efficiently than normal recovery. You’ll hear a lot more about it moving forward in the next few years.